Takuma Kajiwara

Takuma Kajiwara believed that art is universal, transcending culture and race: “A man is born with human characteristics, be he a Japanese, an American, or anything else. The thing that influences him is his environment, what goes on about him.” As a Japanese-born photographer and painter who lived most of his life in the United States, this view was central to how he encountered the world and approached his art.

Born in Fukuoka, Japan in 1876, Kajiwara was the third of five sons in a family of Japanese nobility. His brothers were all artistically inclined, though none but Takuma ventured outside of Japan. As the third child, Kajiwara was free from family responsibilities, enabling him to travel. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the artist dreamt of spending 200 years traveling around the world and absorbing knowledge and culture from countries in Europe and the Americas.

Kajiwara first came to the United States in 1895 and worked in the photography studio of William F. Boyd in Seattle. After a brief return to his native country, he moved to St. Louis in 1904 when a dry plate manufacturer asked him to take over its studio for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Kajiwara was attracted to St. Louis and the Mississippi River, later recalling, “Where there is so much water, I thought, there must be a beautiful city.” Soon after the World’s Fair, Kajiwara opened his own photography studio in St. Louis.

Though he stayed over three decades in St. Louis, Kajiwara lived primarily out of hotels, first at the Hotel Jefferson and later at the Warwick Hotel in downtown St. Louis. This arrangement did not bother the artist, who maintained a busy social and professional life. He was a member of the St. Louis Art League, St. Louis Artists’ Guild, American Federation of Arts, and the St. Louis Two-by-Four Society, serving as President of that organization in 1921. Through these activities, he formed close friendships with fellow artists such as Kathryn Cherry and Frederick Oakes Sylvester. Kajiwara told the Post-Dispatch in 1936, “All day long in my work I have experiences, I meet people, I talk to them, and then, like a cow, I go home at night and chew my cud.”

Kajiwara was praised for his craftsmanship and mastery of the photographic medium. Art Spirit Magazine, the bulletin of the St. Louis Art League, described him as having an “artistic spirit,” which allowed him to impart his own artistic vision in his portraits rather than merely appeasing his clients. So great was his ability that in 1928 he was named one of the seven greatest photographers in the United States by the Photographer’s Association of America.

Kajiwara moved to New York in 1936 after thirty-one years in St. Louis, hoping to find greater interest in his art on the East Coast. Portrait commissions suffered following the Great Depression; but more importantly, Kajiwara had become increasingly dissatisfied with the state of photography in St. Louis. According to the artist, he witnessed a commercialization of portrait photography since he moved to the city in 1904, and claimed, “I just have not the aptitude for those high-pressure methods.” Rather, he maintained that photography should be treated as an art, with dignity.

Kajiwara’s curiosity about the world had an undeniable effect on his life and work. Departing St. Louis, he reminisced, “I considered myself born a part of the whole earth, not merely a part of a little island.” He died on March 1, 1960 at his home in Manhattan, and is interred in Fuchu City, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan.